Ranjeet Rayen
BANGALORE: In today’s competitive world individuals are expected to be self motivated and charged up to face the challenges and pressure of work. "We are not here to make you comfortable, but to make you competitive-is what I say to all my employees," said Tarang’s head of people development, Suresh R.
Even big companies like Infosys and Wipro have tagged their employees to monitor their punch in and punch out time. Despite being large organizations, these companies are having stringent performance based attrition process in place. Last year, Wipro sent off about 700 employees on performance based attrition policy.
Companies have also become very cautious in recruitment. Now it is "demand first" and "supply next" policy for recruitment. Earlier "recruit and keep and will be utilized as and when demand arises" was the mantra and that’s when the benches started becoming warmer. After realizing that they have bitten more than they can chew, companies resorted to lay off employees. Today, utilization rates are scaling and benches are clearing to raise operational profitability for organizations.
Work pressure includes burning the mid night oil to keep up with the time game, urge to learn more than you are expected to and improve productivity by multitasking. "Employees can no longer presume that they need to put in exactly 8 hours of work. In this business environment of deliverables on time, employees are expected to put in the extra effort to complete the projects. Professionals cannot afford to shy away from work," added Suresh.
Those were the glorious days of software and services. Software giants in India used to walk in to campuses and pick up prospective candidates by the shovel. The rest, only a handful, was left for the second and third rung software companies. "I used to be bombarded with questions like is there a swimming pool and gym in your company by the students. I used to take those questions on the defensive and answer to them that they are all being planned. Today students have realized and the economic environment has brought in more sanity," remarked Suresh.
The software giants had frozen campus recruitment in 2001-02 and delayed honoring the offers made by them earlier. As a sign of good times returning back but with caution, these companies are returning back to campuses and are recruiting. Infosys had already made 1000 offers this year in campuses for next year.